Sports of The Times;Softball Strikes While It's Hot

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HERE on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, at Golden Park off Lumpkin Boulevard, the first pitch in Olympic softball medal history was thrown a few minutes after 9 A.M. by an American buzz saw named Michele Granger. It was a fastball that arrived in the catcher's mitt with a considerable clap, for a called strike.

Granger's next pitch was a blazing riser that crashed like a missile into the Plexiglas a ways behind the plate.

By the bottom half of the second inning, with five Granger strikeouts already recorded, with Puerto Rico getting more timid by the swing, the red flag came down out behind the right-field fence. Up went the black flag.

"Imminent risk," said the voice over the public-address system. Fans broiling in unbearable heat were being advised to consume a quart of water every hour, the way Puerto Rican hitters had been warned to proceed to the plate at their own imminent risk.

"I'm known for strikeouts," Granger would say after the 10-run rule was invoked in the home sixth inning and the United States had put an inaugural 10-0 victory into the books. "Once you get two strikes on a hitter, they're yours. You can just play with them."

Then she lamented that on this steamy morning, on which she surrendered 2 hits and struck out 10, she didn't quite have the fastball she used to become the career college strikeouts leader at California.

"Just wasn't clicking in," Granger said. The nerve of this woman. She is 5 feet 11 inches, all arms and legs and flowing blond hair, striding off a rubber 40 feet away, wind-milling the ball between 65 and 72 miles an hour, practically spoon-feeding the catcher by the time she is finished with her stride.

This towering inferno lives in Anchorage, but, forget that, because she seems to be in her true element in these sweltering flatlands, where eight women's softball teams have an Olympics of their own.

"This is for everybody who played the game," said Dot Richardson, a third-year resident in orthopedics surgery at the the University of Southern California medical center in Los Angeles. "You can't ask for anything better than the Olympics, and we're living it now."

They're just not living in the athletes village, or within commuting distance of Planet Hollywood.

Columbus, about two hours south of Atlanta, at least 5 degrees hotter, is the home of Fort Benning, a historic riverfront district and its fair share of strip joints, pawn shops and roadside fast food. Ahmad Rashad will do no late-night sound bites from Billie's Barbecue Bar.

"We all went to Atlanta for the opening ceremonies and we said, 'This is cool,' " Granger said. "It would be nice to be here. But here, you don't have Janet Evans walking past to distract you."

Here, at least the Olympics got off to a clean, synchronized start. Statistics were delivered to the press box with a smile, so no one cared about crashing computers.

Unless old R. C. is a used car dealer or the local sheriff, this meant that an actual soft-drink competitor of an official sponsor of the Games, for $40 million, is getting exposure within 100 feet of an Olympic site.

A refreshing notion, and did we mention yet that Babe Ruth played minor league baseball at this very complex? That Richardson, who dreamed of leading off the tournament with a home run, sort of called her shot by hitting one over the center-field fence to lead off the sixth? Ohhhh, doctor!

Afterward, Richardson and the United States players signed autographs and conducted themselves in a manner befitting a true Dream Team.

They're here, ready to make the best of this. Juan Antonio Samaranch, already dropping hints that these highly skilled players may not have medal moments beyond Atlanta, should come down and take a look at a fine Olympic happening.

"Columbus," Granger said, "has been very good to us."

The United States women have already been here three months, shopping and movie-hopping, jogging and lifting, running up a 60-1 exhibition record which, says the team's crusty coach, Ralph Raymond of Worcester, Mass., doesn't mean a thing.

This sport being a pitcher's paradise, the gold medal will ultimately be determined by an untimely walk, an error, a bunt.

Australia has Tanya (as in Can Ya) Harding, the former U.C.L.A. ringer from Down Under. Canada, another favorite, has pitchers who throw quite hard.

Behind Granger, the United States has Lisa Fernandez, who, as a U.C.L.A. senior three years ago, had an earned run average of 0.51. But no one, based on reputation, throws harder than Granger.

Her catcher, Gillian Box, said she has heard hitters, after looking at Granger's first heater, actually mumble, "Oh my God."

A version of this article appears in print on July 22, 1996, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: Sports of The Times;Softball Strikes While It's Hot. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe